Since they've been away Spooks have chilled out. "S.I.O.S.O.S"
was a dark exploration through conspiracy theories and cryptic messages.
Now the guys are just as keen to party as to rant political agendas and
streams of social conscious lyrics. Here for a short trip to the UK, Designer
Magazine caught up with the laid back Booka T and Ming Xia to get the low-down
on where they've been for the past 2 years.

Q: It's been so long since you were last in the UK,
in fact I think the Snow boarding event in Manchester where me met last
time must have been one of the last shows over here. What have you been
up to all this time?
Ming Xia: The thing was when we weren't in the
UK we were doing shows in Europe. We didn't really do as many shows in
the US as we did here, but when we did there would be a few spot shows
here and there. But we've been recording mainly. Self producing and self
learning how to engineer and all that stuff. And this record took so long
because of that and we switched labels so that contributed to our absence
for a while.

Booka T: Since we made the
first album we've been all throughout Europe and after alot of our shows
we end up going to the club and having some fun. It was just another experience
that we had to add onto the Spooks repertoire. We've tried to get all the
flavours out.

Q: Was it a case of getting the freedom back in Spooks
and restricting yourself from the labels demands?Ming Xia: Over in the States
were on Koch and before we were on Artemis. I think with Koch they understand
us a little bit more and our label mates are KRS-1 and Big Gibb. When we
were on Artemis it just seemed like we were the only type of group on the
label, which kind of hindered us because people who were at that label
didn't know how to market us successfully.

Our label gave us the freedom to do what we wanted to
do, which I understand is not very common. Usually you have an A&R
guiding you and telling you how the sound should be, but we've always been
self-sufficient and in our own mold. A statement people always used to
use on the first album was that we do things our way and were just back
to give people more of the Spooks mission!!!

Booka T: We always demand
freedom even when they're not giving us that. We always make it happen
some kind of way.

Q: The new album "Faster Than You Know" is similar
to the debut in the sense there are light and dark shades. It's not just
a one dimensional hip hop which is so prevalent today. Would you agree?Ming Xia: I think with this
album we'll hit a broader spectrum of people. And we brought in some other
people on this project like Chali 2na from Jurassic 5, a track with the
Beat Miners and Dave Wes as the producer (he did alot of De La material).
It's a fresh different approach but we still maintain what made us so different
in the first place. This time the line-up is a little but different because
Water Water's no long with us, he's doing a solo project, but there's no
love lost.

Now the show is more cohesive, the albums more cohesive
and there's different messages in different songs. We have songs you can
dance to, songs to chill out to and songs you really have to pay attention
to. It's been too long since we've been away to we've got to hit them hard!!!

Booka T: Things changed even
in our home lifes and we wanted to party a bit. Let people know that side
of us as well. That we can do a song like "Wild" or "I'm On It" where you
can still dance and have fun, but it still has that Spooks spark on it
rather than straight ahead shake yer ass thang. It's weird that this album
is a bit lighter but it still has messages throughout. Maybe we've just
found a more fun way to get em out. On "S.I.O.S.O.S" I thought it was perhaps
a little bit too abstract and too dark, but on this one you can definitely
relate to what's going on.

Q: It seems to be a recurring theme with hip-hop acts
that we speak to. The bigger hip hop gets the less innovation is an issue.
What's your take on it?Booka T: My answer to it's
pretty much the same as before. The state of it is pretty cool with hip-hop,
it's just that damn mainstream rap music that's stagnant right now. There's
new groups out in the States now like Lil' Brother,The Life Savers and
a new kat called Kaos which i'm feeling the vibe but they're not really
being brought to the light.

It's still live and strong and it's kind of fun when you
go out and discover something on your own. You rush round and make a lot
of people hit to it which is kind of selfish on my part as I'm sure he
wants everyone to know that he already exists.